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With a new UN Secretary-General (Ban Ki-moon) from the Republic of Korea (aka "South Korea") and with the U.S. dangerously over-extended elsewhere, this seems like an odd time for the U.N. and the U.S. to be ratcheting up the pressure on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK aka "North Korea"). Never the less, that seems to be what is being orchestrated now.
The United Nations Development Program announced Monday that it was suspending work in North Korea because the country had failed to meet conditions set up in response to American complaints that United Nations money was being diverted to the government of Kim Jong-il. [UNDP] said there was no connection between the announcement and the beginning on Monday, at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York, of two days of talks between North Korea, represented by Kim Kye-gwan, and the United States, represented by Christopher R. Hill, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, on the North Korean nuclear program. [...] The decision [...] curtails 20 programs with a budget of $4.4 million [but] aid would continue under two other United Nations organs, the World Food Program and Unicef, the children's agency.
[ from New York Times site ]
The North Korean negotiators may be feeling like they have a strong position, with their recent successes in missile and nuclear technologies and the subsequent upsets in Japan and South Korea coupled with US ground force deployments elsewhere. I hope the full granaries of the South do not begin looking too tempting to the North.
North Korea has most likely run out of last year's harvest [2005] by now [October 2006], and its harvest this year [2006] suffered from massive floods. WFP estimates this year [2006] suggest that North Korea currently lacks 800,000 metric tons of grain, or approximately one-sixth of the county's total annual food needs.
[ from Human Rights Watch site ]
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